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The Pixel 3 and Galaxy Note 9 top DxOMark's new selfie camera scores
We use the selfie camera on our smartphones up to 40 percent of the time, yet most testing puts the emphasis on the rear camera. To address that issue, DxOMark has introduced scoring for front-facing smartphone cameras based on criteria like skin tone and color accuracy, sharpness, contrast, exposure and more. A number of cameras have already been tested, and the models on top, by a wide margin, are Samsung's Galaxy Note 9 and the Google Pixel 3, both with overall scores of 92. Rounding out the top five were Xiaomi's Mi Mix 3, the Apple iPhone XS Max and Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus, with scores of 84, 82 and 81 respectively.
Motorola's next RAZR revival could be a $1,500 foldable phone
Motorola's RAZR flip-phone is reportedly set for a $1,500 foldable makeover. The new handset could arrive exclusively through Verizon as soon as next month, per The Wall Street Journal's sources. You can blame that massive price tag on the expensive components required to build a foldable phone (just ask Samsung, which apparently has its own $1,500 flexible handset slated for a February 20th reveal).
US judge rules that feds can't force fingerprint or face phone unlocks
Authorities can't force people to unlock devices with their faces, fingers or irises, a magistrate judge from California has ruled. Forbes has uncovered a nine-page order denying the search warrant for an investigation looking into a Facebook extortion crime. While the judge admits that investigators were able to establish probable cause for the warrant, she called their request to unlock any phone on the premises with biometrics "overbroad." The request wasn't limited to a particular person or device, and authorities would've been able to get everyone in the house to open their devices.
'Game of Thrones' teaser trailer hypes up the final season
Following some subtle teasers and brief clips, HBO has at least revealed the release date and a substantial teaser for Games of Thrones' final season. The minute-and-a-half long clip shows the remaining Stark children meeting up in the family crypt and receiving ghostly council from Ned Stark and other deceased family members. The description states that "Game of Thrones returns for its final season on April 14."
China's Chang'e-4 touches down on the far side of the moon (update: first pics)
Chinese media announced that the nation's Chang'e-4 lunar lander has successfully reached the far side of the moon, making it the first spacecraft to do so. This is China's recent lunar mission, following Jade Rabbit in 2013, but by touching the side of the moon that's always facing away from the Earth, it has notched a first in the space race.
Amazon sent private Alexa audio recordings to a random person
An Amazon customer in Germany received another user's Alexa audio recordings due to a "human error." The unidentified man was sent thousands of audio snippets, along with other information, in a zip file when he requested access to his own data from Amazon as part of the EU's GDPR guidelines. Searching through the document, he found 1,700 Alexa voice files that belonged to someone else, reports Germany's C't Magazine.
Lenovo built a slider phone with 12GB of RAM
While Lenovo continues to push the Motorola brand in the West, it's also been busy doing its own thing back in China. Just last month, the company brought us the Z5 Pro all-screen slider phone which, to our surprise, packed mid-tier specs to woo the budget-conscious consumers. That's all well and good, but surely such a special form factor deserves the best specs available, right? This is where the new Z5 Pro GT comes in. Announced at the Beijing event today, this new Android phone comes loaded with up to 12GB of RAM -- a new record for smartphones -- along with up to 512GB of storage. It's also the second smartphone confirmed to feature Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 855 chipset, though unlike OnePlus' yet-to-be-named flagship device, Lenovo's slider won't be packing 5G radio.
Hyundai will sell a car that can be unlocked with a fingerprint
Hyundai has unveiled a new car system that lets drivers unlock and start a vehicle using their fingerprints. The tech is built in to the door handle and ignition button of the new 2019 Santa Fe SUV, showcased at an auto show in China last week.
NASA's InSight lander proves it's on Mars with a selfie
Next time you can't find the perfect angle for your selfie, just thank the universe you're not NASA's InSight lander. The spacecraft had to take 11 images with a camera attached to its robotic arm and then stitch them together to create its first self-portrait. InSight clearly took a cue from the Curiosity rover, which has years of experience taking composite selfies with the Martian landscape as its background. You can clearly see InSight's solar panels on full display in the photo, which was captured on December 6th, along with some of its science instruments.
Intel unveils a groundbreaking way to make 3D chips
As it's getting more difficult to cram transistors next to each other in chips, and we near the end of Moore's Law, the only choice is to go vertical. Literally. That's the essence of 3D chip design, and it's the crux of a major Intel announcement this morning: It's developed the first 3D chip architecture that allows logic chips -- things like the CPU and graphics -- to be stacked together. This isn't just a far-flung research project, either. Intel claims we'll see the first products to use Foverus in the second half of next year.
The OnePlus 6T McLaren edition packs 10GB of RAM
OnePlus can't stop making different variants of its flagships, and its latest effort is the result of a team-up with car maker McLaren. The new OnePlus 6T McLaren edition is basically a tweaked version of the phone maker's latest flagship, that's designed to deliver the speed you'd expect from a race car-branded handset.
50 years ago, 'the mother of all demos' foretold our tech future
Innovation usually happens in slow, measured steps over many years, but a demo in 1968 transformed the world of personal computers in just 90 minutes. In a presentation dubbed "the mother of all demos," Douglas Engelbart showed off technology that would lead directly to Apple's Macintosh, the internet, Windows, Google Docs, the computer mouse and much, much more. The most insane part was that it happened 50 years ago in 1968, when microchips were just a gleam in scientists' eyes.
Apple Watch 4's ECG feature is rolling out today
The Apple Watch 4 stole the show at the Apple event in September, in large part due to its built-in electrocardiogram (ECG). The smartwatch was touted as the first consumer device to pack the function -- which goes one further from detecting a low heart rate to sense a dangerous condition known as an atrial fibrillation. Fast forward almost three months, and The Verge reports that the feature is available today courtesy of the latest watchOS update (5.1.2.), along with an irregular rate notification feature for Apple Watches going back to Series 1.
Xiaomi's next phone could be the first with a 48-megapixel camera
Earlier this year, both Sony and Samsung unveiled their own 48-megapixel smartphone sensors, thus breaking the 41-megapixel record previously set by Nokia. With the more recent Huawei Mate 20 Pro and P20 Pro maxing out at "just" 40 megapixels, it's about time for someone else to restart the megapixel race, and who better than Huawei's local rival, Xiaomi, to do so? Earlier today, Xiaomi president Lin Bin took to Weibo -- via his ceramic Mix 3 slider -- to post a close-up photo of what appears to be a phone with a 48-megapixel camera plus dual LED flash. It's unclear how many lenses there are here, but based on how the set is right next to a volume rocker, it's safe to assume that this camera is positioned at the top left corner on the back of the phone.
'Pokémon Go' will finally let you battle other players
If you've been waiting for the day when you can take on your friends in Pokémon Go, you'll be pleased to know you can do just that later this month. Trainer battles will finally arrive by the end of the year -- two and a half years after the game launched.
NVIDIA officially unveils its flagship Titan RTX GPU
Shortly after teasing it, NVIDIA has officially unveiled the its top-end GPU, the Titan RTX. As expected, it has 72 Turing RT and 4,608 CUDA cores, up from 68 and 4,352, respectively, over the RTX 2080 Ti. However, this isn't so much a consumer card (unlike last year's Titan XP), but more in the family of the Titan V compute GPU. As such, it comes with a whopping 24GB of GDDR6 VRAM and packs a $2,500 price tag, both more than double that of the RTX 2080 Ti.
Starbucks is fixing its public WiFi porn problem
Starbucks says it will stop people from viewing explicit imagery over its public WiFi hotspots inside stores following years of pressure from anti-pornography group, Enough is Enough. The organization -- which has already pressured McDonald's and Chick Fil-A to do the same -- forced Starbucks to take action after an online petition amassed over 26,000 signatures.
FBI and Google dismantle multi-million dollar ad fraud scheme
A massive ad-fraud operation that hijacked nearly two million devices and involved 5,000 counterfeit websites has been dismantled by the FBI, Google and bot-detection firm White Ops. The eight men involved in the scheme are facing charges -- three have been arrested and five remain at large.
LG imagines a smartphone with no less than 16 camera lenses
If the five cameras on LG's V40 ThinQ seemed like a lot to you, how about 16? The Korean company may be working on a smartphone camera with that many lenses, according to a recently filed patent seen by LetsGoDigital. Arranged in a 4x4 matrix, it's designed to capture a scene from multiple perspectives in a single shot. That will allow you to shoot 3D movies and manipulate shots by, say, moving someone's head around or replacing it completely.
Google’s Pixel phones will soon save transcripts of screened calls
Google's Call Screen feature has been a boon to Pixel 3 owners wary of tedious telemarketing calls. Instead of taking your chances on an incoming 'Scam Likely' call, you can just get Google Assistant to answer for you. One of the major criticisms of the service, though, is that once the call is complete, the transcript of the conversation disappears. So unless you managed to grab a screenshot of the transcript, or were paying attention to the screen during the call, you'd have nothing to refer to later beyond a caller number. None of this is really conducive to fuss-free spam filtering. But Google has been paying attention to feedback, and it seems that Call Screen transcripts are on the way.
